Bikes and books. Films reviewed: The Last Rider, Umberto Eco: A Library of the World
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
It’s Summertime and Toronto is melting. Luckily there are lots of new movies playing at festivals, both indoors and out. The ICFF is showing great movies from Morocco to China at the distillery district throughout July. Art of Documentary Film Festival is on next Saturday, July 15th, at Innis Town Hall Theatre featuring a talk by Shasha Nakhai and Rich Williamson, the great Toronto directors who brought us Scarborough. And later this month keep an eye out for the Female Eye Film Fest featuring memorable movies and shorts directed by women.
But this week I’m looking at two new documentaries that stimulate the body and the mind. There’s an Italian film about books and American one about Bikes.
The Last Rider
Wri/Dir: Alex Holmes (Maiden)
It’s 1989. Greg LeMond is a champion professional cyclist who was the first American ever to win the Tour de France. He has trained since a teenager in Lake Tahoe, growing up with a gut-knowledge of their mountains and steep roads. He meets Cathy, his future wife, like in a movie, at a Holiday Inn. He is soon recruited as a member of the Renault team, moves to France for training, and becomes world famous. Cathy comes with him, dropping out of College.
But after winning the Tour, he falls into a deep depression, followed by a terrible accident: he is accidentally shot and almost killed on a turkey hunt with his family. This happens while Cathy is in labour, so Greg barely gets a chance to see their newborn for weeks. But after a few years of recovery, they decide he should try once again.. Not to win the Tour de France, but just to see if he can finish it (remember: competitive cycling, especially climbing up 
gruelling Alpen roads like in the Tour, requires absolute perfection in strength, skill and stamina— and Greg still has metal pellets riddling his body!)
But to everyone’s surprise, it becomes a three way race for Greg, Pedro Delgado and Laurent Fignon. Who will wear the yellow jersey?
The Last Rider is a biographical sports doc about that historical and exciting race in 1989. It’s 75% period video footage — the Tour de France is heavily photographed, start to finish — and 25% new taking-head interviews with LeMond, his family and many participants in that race. 1989 was before the dirty side of professional cycling — all the scandals, illegal drugs and supplements that became endemic in the sport — so there is a sense of innocence and pathos permeating this story. I am not a big fan of the sport — I barely follow it — but it was still an exciting watch.
Umberto Eco: A Library of the World
Dir: Davide Ferrario
Umberto Eco is a writer, novelist and semiotician from Piedmont, Italy. He writes books — including international bestselling novels like The Name the Rose and Foucault’s Pendulum — and academic essays and treatises. He also accumulates and reads an astonishingly diverse number of books. And though he is an academic, he avoids ranking books by their moral or political value, ignoring the usual canons of good vs bad literature.
His shelves are filled with Charlie Brown bobble heads beside Voltaire, devoting equal space to fumetti — low-brow italian comics — and pulp fiction, as he does to obscure codices scribed by medieval monks. The more obscure the better. There are illuminated manuscripts of animals with human heads. And — unlike the current vogue of labelling works as misinformation, disinformation or “fake news” — Eco loves writers who churn out huge quantities of books of dubious credibility and provenance. Like the 17th-century German Jesuit Athanasius Kircher, who studied and wrote about practically everything, including travelogues of China (despite never having been there), and treatises on mathematics, music, medicine, the tower of Babel and Egyptian hieroglyphics. There’s always room for mysticism, conspiracy theories and apostate Cathars. Eco died in 2016 but left behind a stupendous collection of books, including his own 
Umberto Eco: A Library of the World is a fascinating, esoteric and aesthetically pleasing documentary about Eco and his writing, the books he read, and about libraries worldwide. Members of his family tell their stories and they and actors recite aloud some of Eco’s works, both profound and mundane. There are also 
If you like Umberto Eco’s work, this is a must-see; and if you’ve never heard of him watch this movie — you’ll learn learn a thing or two.
Umbertio Eco: A Library of the World starts next Friday at Hot Docs cinema, and The Last Rider which recently opened in Toronto is playing later this month at the Lavazza INCLUCITY FESTIVAL in the distillery district; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Saturday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
Around the world in 167 days. Film reviewed: Maiden
Hi, this is Daniel Garber at the Movies for culturalmining.com and CIUT 89.5 FM.
The movie industry has its ups and downs, and so does its release dates. And this week is one of the slowest all year, with no big-budget releases, and virtually no indie movies either. And the one getting the most publicity is one I will not review, or even mention its name. I haven’t seen it, but, word has it, it’s a bizarre piece of propaganda that crept up from south of the border to appease the religious right, a fringe group in Canada but a major force in the US.
Basically, it paints reproductive rights — specifically abortion — as the terrain of depraved and greedy doctors who cruelty chop up screaming babies in order to sell their parts for profit. It could make for a good science fiction / horror movie, but they’re marketing it as a “true story”. Anyway, if you find yourself in line at a movie theatre, be sure to avoid making any Unplanned decisions in your choice of film. Avoid it at all costs.
This week, I’m talking about a new documentary with a woman who wants to sail around the world.
Maiden
Dir: Alex Holmes
It’s England in the 1980s. Tracy Edwards is a young woman who works as a bartender seaside town. She has no real goals and ambitions but is drawn to the sea. So she decides to get a job as a cook on a sailboat. But she is shocked to find no one would hire a woman, even as a cook. Boating is a man’s world, they say, and not a place for “girls”.
But this “girl” – she’s actually in her early 20s – decides 
if you can’t join ’em, beat ’em… at their own game. She puts together an all-women crew, and enters the legendary Whitbread round the world boat race. But first she needs sponsors and a sailboat. She mortgages her home to buy a rusty old hull and spends the next couple years in an all-male shipyard, putting it into ship-shape condition. Then there’s the money. Much as in other sports, sponsors 
don’t want to give any money to women. But she eventually finds someone to put up the bucks. (No spoilers, but he happens to be a king.)
The journey has four legs after leaving Portsmouth: first to Punta del Este, Uruguay; next to Western Australia and on to Auckland, NZ; then to Fort Lauderdale, Florida, and finally back to Portsmouth.
The press treats her, and the very idea of an all female crew, as a novelty, a human interest story. Do you fight
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all the time? Can you control your emotions? Are you physically able? But as the journey progresses, they come to be seen as serious competitors, not just novelties. And they learn to own the media, donning swimsuits to enter a port to distract journalists after a less than stellar segment. But will they make it around the world?
Maiden – the name of the boat and the documentary – is a gripping sports movie with a feel-good ending. It interviews all the players 30 years later, but also includes stunning footage filmed by the crew themselves during their voyage.
It’s full of fascinating details… like the fact you can start 
smelling land at sea five days before you reach it. You really feel like you’re there with them, seaspray in your face, dodging icebergs in the south seas, or strapped to the mast. It’s an exciting, hazardous and gruelling trip around the world using only the power of wind. (GPS and the internet wasn’t around yet; you navigated using maps.) And the willpower and determination of Tracy Edwards and the rest of the crew.
Great doc.
Maiden opens today in Toronto; check your local listings.
This is Daniel Garber at the Movies, each Friday morning, on CIUT 89.5 FM and on my website, culturalmining.com.
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